


The Resilience of Memory

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Memory Loss, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Possible Character Death, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-03-07 08:35:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: After the world ends in the lazar plague, the Winter Soldier meets Tony Stark and is forced to consider the sacrifices that every Agent of Shield must make -- and wonder if the cure is worse than the disease.





	1. Chapter 1

Replacing ammunition was difficult, the Winter Soldier reminded himself. Few remained with the skills to make either guns or bullets. The New Atlanta city-state was nearly two months of hard walking from Resilient and its Reed-Strange Oscillating Sphere, a fancy name for the force field dome that covered what used to be New York City. Not to mention that the DC quarantine zone was between here and there. Therefore, the Winter Soldier gritted his teeth; he should not shoot Resilient’s gatekeeper. No matter how satisfying it would be. 

"I need shelter, food, supplies, and medical treatment," the Winter Soldier said. He leaned down over the withers of Brooklyn, one of the hybrid war-machines. Half cyborg, half equine, Brooklyn had much of the same technology that kept her rider fit for duty. She was a bit temperamental, an older model, but the Winter Soldier had been riding her for the better part of three decades and they were used to each other. 

"I have tech and information for trade." The Winter Soldier spoke slowly; perhaps the gatekeeper was just old, or hard of hearing. Unlikely as it was, there might even have been a shift in language -- that had happened, been recorded even. Most city-states still spoke Mercan, or Spañol, especially in the east and south. _Merciful_ , the Winter Soldier was worn to the nub. He shook his head to clear his fatigue, wincing at the pain in his wounds. 

He would just about straight up murder someone for a mug of kofi. The old gatekeeper, with his fancy accent and his smug eyebrows, probably wouldn’t have kofi on hand, which was making him less and less valuable to the Winter Soldier for every moment he was kept on his mount. 

"You can't come in here!" The gatekeeper appeared both terrified and scandalized, as if the Winter Soldier had committed some great social blunder. "You've been bitten! You could be infected." 

Oh. _That._  

The Winter Soldier would admit that the wound _was_ gruesome. He’d wrapped it as best he could. Hydra’s lazars could track the smell of blood. He’d thinned their ranks in his trek from the Great Lakes east, there were probably still a few stubborn ones that were mindlessly following a food source. He hadn’t seen any red skulls, which meant they didn’t have a leader. Which was good. Still, the bandage was deep red and sticky damp in the center, and the edges, where he’d been chewed on before he’d killed the last of the horde. 

"I'm an agent," the Winter Soldier explained. He dug around inside his tattered armor and pulled out the silver stylized eagle on black amulet that identified him. "I'm with SHIELD. I can't be infected." That was… mostly true. Sometimes the lazar’s bites could infect even the agents who had the most recent versions of the serum; the techdisease that raged in the lazars was unstable. Recent mutations of the virus had infected a whole squad of agents down in Mexico-city. Well, recent by an agent’s view, at least. Ten years ago, maybe? The Winter Soldier was fuzzy on the timeline. 

"Get down off that great mechanical beast of yours and lemme see that!" 

"I cannot, sur," the Winter Soldier said. "I've broken my leg and if I get down without guaranteed shelter and medical assistance, I ain’t gonna be unable to get back up. If you need someone to vouch for me, send word to Agent Carter. She should remember me." 

"Carter’s been recycled. Her foster son's the mechanic now. Would young master Stark be able to provide suitable references?" 

Puffing out a great breath of air, the Winter Soldier committed the fact to his memory. Carter had been a former agent, one of SHIELD’s best and finest. She’d settled in Resilient years ago, after decades of service. “She will be missed,” the Winter Soldier said, bowing his head. 

The Winter Soldier consulted his retaining strands, silver tubes of data that plugged into his scalp and twisted along the dark locks there. Damn the handlers back in New Atlanta. He hated the feel of memories that weren't his own any more. Faces and names that felt memorized more than experienced. Not that there was anything he could do about it; the Winter Soldier knew as well as the handlers what long-term memory meant. 

Heightened emotions, empathy, even love, unfortunately reduced his effectiveness in the field. And resetting his memories prevented retention-madness, a condition that had cost hundreds of agents their lives before the handlers had found a way to stop it. Only when an agent retired was he allowed to keep those precious gems of memories. Sometimes, for older agents, just recovering them all drove them mad. "A foster son… Tommy? No, it was _Tony_ , wasn't it? Perhaps he will. Tell him James Barnes, the Winter Soldier, is here." 

"Tell him yourself, then," the gatekeeper said. "We still got holo here, although I daresay the feed went down, four year or so ago." 

"It went down everywhere," the Winter Soldier said. "The last satellite was wrecked by some orbital debris; we haven't the means to fix it. New Atlanta is almost prepared to launch a new one, however. If you've kept your equipment in good repair, you should get the feed again by mid-summer." 

The gatekeeper did not acknowledge that; working the dials and fiddles of the holo took all his feeble old attention. The way he squinted, the Winter Soldier figured him to be dreadfully near-sighted. Perhaps that was why he hadn't recognized an agent of Shield. The gatekeeper prodded a button with one heavy-knuckled hand, and then kicked the side of the 'deck sharply. "Pardon me, young master Stark, are you available?" 

The image of the mechanic stepped onto the 'deck. The so-called _young master_ was no boy at all, long and lean, with dark good looks, black hair and honey brown eyes, all the more interesting because of his dusky skin and immaculately styled goatee. "Always for you, Jarvis. Are your lungs troubling you again? I can get out to the gate in--" The holo looked around, then blinked, eyes widening. " _Bucky_! Is it really you?" 

The Winter Soldier sighed inwardly. Such a reaction -- they must have been friends. _Fragments_ , that was going to be difficult. "Yeah, it is, sur. I require medical attention. I have tech and news." 

The gatekeeper -- Jarvis, Stark had called him -- cut the holo with a disgruntled snort. "Right, then. Get down here and off to the workshop." A mechanic, Stark could handle basic medical care, and more for the Winter Soldier’s sake, basic maintenance on his replacement limb. 

"I'll need transport there, whatever's the norm here. A chair, or cart. I can't stand on this leg. Nor would you want me bringing the warmachine in here. Brooklyn will be fine outside." The Winter Soldier kicked his good leg over the side of the saddle and tentatively lowered himself to the ground. His broken leg useless, unable to hold his weight, the Winter Soldier leaned against Brooklyn for support while Jarvis puttered about and fussed. Foolish old sot, the Winter Soldier swore. He shuddered, pain blacking his vision. There was not enough time; his body and his serum had been pushed beyond endurance. The Winter Soldier crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter contains:  
> Presumed character death  
> betrayal  
> blood and gore
> 
> You know your mental state. Feel free to ask me on tumblr (tisfan) or in the comments if you need content guidance

_A few weeks previous_  

"No! Clint! Hawkeye!" the Black Widow screamed, struggling against him. She clawed at the Winter Soldier's iron grip around her shoulders, fingernails drawing blood from his right arm, gouging his flesh -- painful, but his serum healed the trifling wounds instantly. Black Widow tore more chunks of skin free. Blood dripped down his arm. Dangerous; the lazars had a particularly keen sense of smell. "No, he's still alive! We have to go back! We have to! James, please, _merciful_ , we have to help him!" 

"He's beyond help," the Winter Soldier said. "They all are. We can go back and die and waste their sacrifice, or you can hold your Oath. Leave them behind. We have to go." 

Black Widow stopped struggling, and that was a relief. Bad enough that she was as strong as he was, and slippery-nimble as an eel, but he didn't exactly disagree with her. It was his Oath, only his Oath, that kept him going. He'd never left agents behind before. There had never before been a need. Not since the early days of the Last War had there been lazars of this number: thousands, tens of thousands, and all amassed in a horde. The early agents had wiped out many of the infected, and many hundreds of millions had simply starved to death, or turned on each other in their desperate need to devour flesh and blood. In more recent years -- the Winter Soldier had been patrolling as an agent for at least the last seventy years -- only small bands of those infected with the Lazarus virus remained. There were some city-states who hadn't seen a single lazar in the decades. 

There had always been, before, the hope that the plagues would die out, that the lazar hordes would dwindle into nothingness. 

That hope was gone, now. 

"I hate you." Black Widow didn't relax so much as deflate. 

"I know." It wouldn't last. They would get through this, warn the city-states to the north east, then head back to New Atlanta to let Shield know what had happened. She would be wiped clean, start again, and then she would forget Hawkeye, her partner and lover for the last twenty years, and she would forget this deep, abiding loathing for the Winter Soldier and his talk of Oaths. It was well past time for her to return anyway; merciful only knew how she and Hawkeye had avoided it these last few years. A wipe was long overdue. 

The Winter Soldier was her superior; he’d been her teacher when she graduated from the Red Room. They were friends. Friends long enough that even her retaining strands held that information. She knew him. Knew he was right. Even if she didn’t want to admit it. Even if the Winter Soldier didn’t want to acknowledge it. 

Hawkeye was dead, more than likely. Fallen under the horde of lazars that surged out from the undergrounds and ruined buildings, blind with bloodlust, hungry for human flesh. Quick and dangerous, although directionless. They hadn’t seen any leaders, how was that possible? Most lazar packs found under the command of a single leader. The red skulls had some sort of limited intelligence, could keep the lazars in an army. 

Usually, it was the strategy of Shield agents to wound the leaders, make them run, and the lazars would follow. With no skulls, only base hunger drove them. And they would keep coming until there were no humans left. 

Hawkeye had sacrificed himself, to give Black Widow and the Winter Soldier time to escape. Someone had to carry the news. 

"Come on, then." The Black Widow led the way out of the ruins of Ascendant, moving at a quick pace. The lazars hadn't caught their trail yet, but there was no point in waiting around to be found. It didn't take long; a shift in the wind took their scent back to the horde of ravening infected. And then it was a race; Lazarus-infected nanobots against the updated but more limited serum. The Winter Soldier and the Black Widow could run faster, longer, but they weren't indefatigable. 

Pushing their bodies to work harder, burning energy recklessly, running down the streets, climbing buildings to escape stray mobs of lazars, fighting the ones who caught up or ambushed them: each of these things took a toll from their resources. By the time they hit the Tube, the Winter Soldier was freezing cold and almost hungry enough to break Oath and join the lazars in consuming human flesh. He shivered violently, his fingers locked tight to his machete in one hand, his pistol in the other. He hadn't reloaded it; that would take too much time, nor did he have the energy to re-holster. 

"Jump," Black Widow commanded and put actions to words. Hitting the bottom of the Tube, some hundred feet below, was going to hurt like a bastard. "Clear." Her voice echoed softly up the Tube, followed by the distinct snick of her weapon's check. She carried stinging shock-bites, as well as guns. And a graceblade, like all agents. 

The Winter Soldier looked back over his shoulder at the ruins of Ascendant. There was no way to learn the truth: how the largest city-state in the world had been so completely overrun, had been converted, how the Lazarus virus had surged again. All he knew was that, according to his Oath, he had to stop it. And he had to warn the other city-states that the horde was coming. 

He leaped into the blackness. 

Pain flared, bright and orange-red in the darkness. He slipped, rolled, fell. Steel sliced open his calf, skating in brilliant agony along the bone. Blood ran thick, dripping into the abyss beyond. He twisted; the slender bone snapped with a vicious crack. 

"Fuck!" The Winter Soldier slammed his fists into the ground. The wound closed near-instantly, pain fading, but his flesh had closed around the intrusive metal spar, effectively pinning him in place. He jerked the leg again, broke it again, but the steel merely slid deeper, growing, fusing with his bone. Stupid, useless serum. Incredibly accelerated healing did have its drawbacks. The Winter Soldier winced, then relaxed. 

Black Widow stood before him, her red hair like a curtain, saying nothing, watching him struggle. Her face was raw with newly healed skin, but her eyes were steady. 

"I could use a hand," the Winter Soldier confessed. "I'm integrating with this junk-pile." 

"No." She drew her pistol. "No, I don't think so. You'll just take me back." 

The Winter Soldier wrenched at his trapped limb. The leg broke, reformed, broke again. Hunger screamed at him, the heat of healing scorched along his throat. 

Her finger twitched on the trigger. Blazing heat tore his shoulder open; the blast echoed along the Tube, bouncing around cement and steel walls.

"What are you doing? They'll hear you!" The Winter Soldier jerked his leg violently, coughing up a mouthful of blood. "Stop it!" 

"I won't go back to New Atlanta." She shot him again. The bullet took him through the kidney. He groaned, slumped forward. His leg broke again, healed, melding him more effectively to the structure. "I won't forget Hawkeye." A third shot rang out, tearing his intestines and spraying Rorschach patterns of blood along the wall. "And I will never forgive you." She raised her gun one last time. 

The Winter Soldier stared into the barrel. A bullet to the brain would end him. Even the serum couldn't heal that much damage if his brain and heart were stopped. 

She trembled, finger tightening on the trigger.


	3. Chapter 3

The Winter Soldier stirred in his sleep, muttering incoherently.

Tony had to lock down his lab; there were too many people in Resilient and everyone wanted news from the outside world. The satellite feed had gone down about a year previous, and there’d been no news, and only two batches of letters in the meanwhile. People were worried about their relations in different city-states, eager for reassurances that the Feed would get back on line, concern for what the lazars had been up to.

And just before the feed had gone down, there’d been rumors of a warmonger, Killian, who’d taken over two city-states in the south, and was possibly looking to expand an empire, with the risk of the lazarus virus on the ebb.

Keeping people away from his workshop had been priority one, and Tony had gotten Friday on it, to keep the doors locked, and to send out holo updates with some regularity. Basically a case of “you’ll know more when I know more.”

Tony shook his head; Bucky had never been injured for more than a few hours, but now the wound was festering. He was fevered and delirious. Without understanding the cause, Tony had no choice but to wait and do as little as possible, unless things grew much worse.

They didn’t have a doctor anymore, just an herbalist and a few people who knew first aid, but the serum negated the need for most medical procedures anyway. He stripped Bucky out of his blood and mud-stained clothing, discovering a number of other, lesser wounds in the process, and bathed his skin with cold water and antiseptic soap. It was little enough, but seemed to make him more comfortable.

For purely selfish matters, Tony didn't enjoy it as much as he might have, otherwise. Bucky was well-formed, muscular, and attractive, skin that was bronzed with weather, paler at the belly and arms. Tony had always before found pleasure in looking at him. Now, he was practically yellow, sickly, his skin mottled with purple bruises and bloody bites.

Even with his injuries there was no hint of his real age, which Tony understood to be something more than a hundred years -- there was something about the serum that prevented aging; an agent could live well over two hundred years. Bucky didn’t look any different from the last time Tony had seen him, a half dozen years ago or so, but even considering that, there was the picture of Peggy Carter, before she retired, her arm around the two agents, James Barnes and Steve Rogers. They had all barely changed at all. Peggy, who had died in a terrible accident, hadn’t looked a day over fifty when she’d gone. (Even the fastest healing couldn’t repair severe head trauma and brain damage. Nor would anyone want it to; healing a dying body with no brain to guide it was what caused the lazarus virus outbreak to start with.)

There were rumors that, back in New Atlanta, some of the original agents still lived, old and feeble, but alive. The War had been in the later half of the last century -- no one really remembered anymore the exact year or reasons -- but in later years, it would come to be called the Last War, or the War to End Wars. Tony, cynical as he was as a young adult, doubted that mankind would ever be so long without some sort of fighting amongst themselves, but in the hundred years since the Last War, there had been no such conflict.

There didn’t really need to be; humans banded together against the mutated lazars, but the lazars didn’t consume resources like food or water or minerals. With the scattered remains of humanity in defended fortress-towns having to struggle just to stay alive, there wasn’t time or inclination to fight against potential trade-partners or breeding mates.

The city-states had grown slowly, then were wiped out from lazar attacks or disease or food shortages; whole swaths of what had once been a great nation were gone and wasteland now, unfit for crops or herds, even if it was safe to be out from behind the walls and protections of the city-states. Resilient had managed well enough, building vertical farms so that they had excess food supplies, poultry and herds of sheep and goats to provide variety. In the undercity, even fish were stocked in goodly number, which made Resilient a very desirable living situation compared to what he'd heard about some of the other city-states.

Tony checked Bucky's temperature again. It was still rising. "Let's go ahead and pack him in ice," he suggested to his assistant, a promising girl that had been delivered to him as a wife in payment for equipment for a homestead farm a few years back. That was ridiculous -- and the farmers hadn’t had anything else to trade -- but she was bright and Tony recognized that she was really more useful in the workshop than taking care of goats and chickens, he kept her on anyway. Riri was competent, intelligent, and entirely uninterested in being a potential mate (not to mention several years to young for him). Riri nodded and moved decisively into the next room, where he heard her filling and stacking the ice bags.

"Wake up, honey." Tony took advantage of the relative privacy to lean over and kiss Bucky's burning forehead, almost wincing at the feel of fever under his lips. "I've missed you. Also," he said, leaning back and crossing his arms, "I'm afraid I'm very little good to you without your consent and awareness."

Brilliant storm gray eyes opened and stared at him without softening, without recognition. "I don't... what's happened? I feel so... who are you?" Bucky blinked a few times, sighed. He raised his metal hand to scrub at his face, then let it fall weakly back to the cot.

"Yeah, I get that you’re not feeling so hot, cupcake," Tony said. "You're sick, and I've never seen you sick before. Perdition and thunder, I don't know that anyone's even heard of an agent being ill before. You rode up to the gates and fell over without much explanation. Come on, Bucky, baby, tell me what’s happened?"

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Tony was torn between amusement and a terrible fear at the blank look stamped over the Winter Soldier's handsome features. Tony could have sworn there really was not a trace of recognition. “You are,” Tony said. “What did you do, hit your head? It’s me, Tony.”

"Oh. Right. The mechanic. You’re Carter’s protege?" The Winter Soldier shifted, groaned. Blood flowed fresh from his wounds, soaking the bandage.

"Glad you're awake," Tony said crisply. He shoved everything aside except for the critical factors; Bucky was injured and he needed help. The rest of it could wait until he was stable. Hopefully, it was just a glitch in the serum, something easily fixable, treatable. And that Bucky would start making sense, quicky. Merciful help them all if the Winter Soldier’s serum had been corrupted by the lazarus virus. "I can't treat you without knowing how you hurt yourself. I didn't want to make a mistake."

"I injected myself with an antiserum to negate my regenerative abilities," the Winter Soldier said. Decidedly the Winter Soldier, Tony noted. Even before, when they were friends and better than friends, Bucky had a distinct personality, different from his official title and function. There was a shuttered look in his eyes, a stiffness to that lush, mobile mouth that was utterly lacking in Tony’s friend. Falling back on his role, while he was ill, perhaps. "I broke my leg about fifteen times in only a few minutes, and if I'd kept healing, I would have starved to death. I'm only a few days ahead of a lazar horde the likes of which has not been seen since the War. I really don't have--"

Suddenly, Tony was absolutely sick, revolted, by the monotone of the Winter Soldier. He wanted his friend, his lover… his life. Back.

"Don't worry, love," Tony said. "I'll kiss it and make it better." With that, he touched his mouth to Bucky's suddenly eager lips.


	4. Chapter 4

Mesmerized by the sight of the doctor leaning over him, his handsome face coming closer, the Winter Soldier just stared. He couldn't have closed his eyes if his life depended on it. Tony brushed his lips over the Winter Soldier's, a light, breath-stealing touch. Lust, longing, desire rushed through him and he surged upward, greedy for the embrace. 

Nothing had prepared him for such intimacy; although he must have touched, must have loved _someone_ before. Those events were not recorded by the retainers, weren't part of the mission reports. Anyway, how could words even come close to capturing the slick feel of Tony's tongue on his lip, the silken slide of the inside of his mouth, the faint taste of medicine and coffee, the rasp of unshaven skin against his cheek? The Winter Soldier raised his hand, twining fingers deep into Tony's raven-dark hair, pulling the man closer, wanting... wanting something he didn't even know how to name. 

The Winter Soldier groaned against the heat of Tony's mouth, drew Tony's breath into his own lungs. His clothing chafed at his skin; he wanted nothing so badly as to rip it away, feel the warm comfort of Tony's chest against his own, hear their heart beats in tandem. 

He was so lost in the sheer simple joy of the kiss that nothing else mattered, nothing at all. The horde of lazars, barely behind him, no longer were a pressing concern. The wounds, so agonizing, were forgotten. 

The Winter Soldier gasped, eyes opening wide. His wounds were fading. Fading, closing, the fierce pain receding to a dull ache, and then to nothingness. Without leaving behind the burning hunger that serum healing roused in him. He struggled to sit up, yanking his mouth away from Tony’s. 

"Merciful! What have you done?"

"Ah, good. Base repair tech for wound-healing, plasma regeneration, that sort of thing,” Tony tapped his chest, hitting a round, metal item underneath. “They’re dummy rounds, really. Work for less than twelve hours and flush out of the system. I produce them with the arc-reactor. So cool, I’ll show you later. I wasn’t sure if they’d work with your serum. Pretty good healing for non-altered humans, you know. Of course, I don't resort to such intimate delivery methods with most of my patients." There was a smug, sly smirk dancing on Tony's lips and the Winter Soldier had to restrain himself from pulling the man down for another soul-shattering kiss. His head whirled, attempting to make sense of the surge of emotions and wealth of information. 

"What? Wait. You programmed _serum_? Infected yourself? Are you insane?" 

"Well, it’s not _serum_ , not exactly. It’s a short run, and the code is housed inside my--” He yanked up his shirt to show off a flash of chest and a glowing core that was, quite literally, implanted in his sternum. “It doesn’t last long outside the host, so it can’t get corrupted, and I’m on top of the code, quite literally.” Tony blinked. "You helped me. You and Peggy, we designed the system-- Bucky, what's wrong with you? Don't you remember?" 

This was the moment, the Winter Soldier knew. He could lie, pretend that while he remembered, but that it was not important enough to keep track -- that was what the Council would have him do. For the best interest of the agents, of the city-states, it was what he should do. Tell him that he hadn’t believed Tony would do such a thing. Deny that their relationship -- whatever it had been, had meant nothing to him, not even worth thinking about. He was astonished that the Council hadn’t sent an operative to investigate, when the Winter Soldier had reported this, and he must have reported it, didn’t he? Hadn’t he? 

Black Widow hadn't wanted to forget her lover, the Winter Soldier thought. He gazed at Tony's face, the cut planes of his cheeks, the full sweetness of his mouth. Nor should she have to. No one should forget this. He reached a hand up and cupped the back of Tony's neck, pulling him down for one more soft kiss. One last moment before he confessed everything. Had to taste that mouth again, to feel loved. Just one more time. 

"No. I don't remember. I'm not _permitted_ to remember anything. I don’t… I don’t know you." 

*** 

The explanation hadn't made things better. Tony's gut twisted and iced over, damnable fear and sickening despair competed for his mind. 

He stared at his lover; desperately missed, hopelessly adored. There was so little of that left, just the spark of physical attraction between them. The Winter Soldier recalled nothing -- _nothing_ \-- from their time together. Their relationship, he said, had been unofficial. Only the official reports, only the actual jobs, were in his memory. Nothing of their side projects, nothing of what they'd spoken, nothing of love or desire or promises. “I don’t even know how you’re still alive,” he confessed to Tony. “I must have reported, I would have reported. I can’t… there’re no secrets between agents and the handlers. And this--” He waved a hand at Tony’s arc-reactor, at the amazing breakthroughs he’d made over the last several years. “They would not have approved of this at all. I can’t imagine… there’s been no team?” 

“I haven’t seen anyone from Shield since Aunt Peggy died,” Tony told him. Numb. But Peggy would have known, wouldn’t she? Would have known how Shield would have reacted, and she hadn’t even warned him? What did she know that Tony didn’t? A lot, apparently, because she’d never mentioned this, either. Hadn’t prepared him to lose Bucky so thoroughly, and she should have. She should have fucking told him. Tony clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms. They healed instantly, as the nanobots streamed out of the arc-reactor to close his wounds. There was no physical pain to distract himself from the abyss in his heart. 

"What do we do now?" Tony couldn't even hold Bucky accountable; how do you blame someone who had no recollection of what they'd done that was so terribly, horribly wrong? 

" --in the end, I guess Black Widow just couldn't bring herself to kill me outright," the Winter Soldier was saying. He’d carried on with his story, not even seeming to realize that Tony’s whole life was falling apart right in front of him. "It took me hours to work myself free from the wreckage. It was harder than it would have been with her help, but easier than it was when she was shooting me, so I'll take what I can get." The Winter Soldier paused, grinned that quick flash of self-mocking amusement that always made Tony's heart beat just a little faster. 

"Are you serious?" Tony's arm darted out without his permission and slapped Bucky upside the back of his head. "You could have _died_ and I've lost you anyway, and you make _jokes_ about it?" 

The Winter Soldier caught Tony's hand, held it to his chest. "I'm sorry to cause you pain." The ache in those stormcloud gray eyes was sincere. "There are reasons why agents are so constantly reassigned. Shield don't wish to cause anyone pain. Not you, nor I." 

"That's a scragged drive and you know it." Tony snatched his hand back. "What possible reason can they have for this... this..." 

"Tony," the Winter Soldier said, very gently, "I am over a hundred years old. If I’m not killed in battle, I might live three, maybe _four hundred years_. Would you have me remember and mourn your loss so long? Would you give me nothing but grief and bitterness, filled with regret and misery? Love is a weakness in an agent. It clouds our judgment. I would not be here now, save for what has happened in Ascendant. I wouldn’t have been assigned here at all, Resilient wouldn’t be on my route for another thirty years at least. You would _never_ have known that I was wiped." 

"Is that the official line?" Tony turned away, swallowing against an impossible confusion, pain of a magnitude that he could barely comprehend. Bucky wasn't dead. He was right there, flesh and blood and bone in front of Tony, but he had, nonetheless, been stolen. 

"It is the truth. I should not have given you that much. We’re trained to lie, if it happens that we run into a citizen we know. But I couldn’t lie to you." The Winter Soldier frowned. "Obviously, _something_ remains, Tony. I -- for what comfort it is -- I still want you. I still care about you. The situation is what it is, I cannot change it now, but is there no chance we can rebuild what we had?" 

"Why?" Tony clenched his jaw so tightly his teeth crackled. "What's the _point_? You'll leave again, it will be over again, and I'll be alone. _Again_. You forgot. You got over it. Have the courtesy to let me do the same."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pointless ramblings about my life in the end notes. TL:DR sorry! I missed last week's posting!

"Here." The Winter Soldier tried for a practical approach, even though just _looking_ at Tony made his throat tight with desire. There was a secondary ache, somewhere in the hollow of his chest that he didn’t even know how to name. "I brought you a gift." He deposited the plascrete sample box on Tony's desk. 

"A bug?" The cockroach inside scrambled at the slick walls of its prison, antennae twitching with annoyance. "I'm all in raptures." 

The Winter Soldier grinned. "Infected with the latest Lazarus virus. Took it right outta Ascendant, so it’s ground zero. If you have the equipment to make your own serum, we might be able to find a weakness, or reprogram the lazars that are -- even now -- headed this way." 

"The dome will hold them off," Tony said. He didn't look away from the insect that was, even now, trying to chew its way through its plascrete walls. Infected with the virus, it was stronger, faster than the normal insect of its type. The Winter Soldier estimated he had another day, maybe two, before the creature broke through. 

"I don't think you're aware, really, of how many there are," the Winter Soldier said. "It’s been least a decade since there was a horde this extensive. Th’ dome ain’t gonna hold ‘em back. There’s enough to throw half their forces at you, until the power’s burned out. And I don’t reckon you want to go back to livin’ just inside the dome. Your people would be restricted to the city-state; surely you have farms, now? Herds? So many of the city-states do. With only a dozen or so of the lazars, even the unaltered can fend them off. There are tens of thousands of them, Tony. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand. All hungering. Even if Resilient can survive such a thing, there are other cities, less well defended. Spread out. We gotta wipe ‘em out." 

"Help yourself." Tony gestured. "The machinery you need is in the back, down the stairs. There's a hidden door behind the bookshelves. Aunt Peggy wasn’t an idiot. She wouldn’t leave the lab where it might be discovered. Do you even remember Aunt Peggy?"

The Winter Soldier took a deep breath. “I remember Agent Carter. She was one of the founders, back in the beginning. But it is all dry, dessicated. Information only. I would know her picture if I saw her, but I can’t recall anything personal. Will… I'd like your assistance in the lab." 

"Well, we don't always get what we want, do we?" Tony glanced at The Winter Soldier's extended hand and his lip curled up. "You could have told me, _before_. Maybe it wouldn't change anything, but at least I would have known, would have expected--" 

"Tony, I don't know. There are punishments for talking of this at all." 

"How can they punish you for breaking their rules? You'll lose all your memories, so it's not like you'd remember being punished." 

"Not for me. For you. There are too many things you know. They would kill you for it." The Winter Soldier reached over, touched Tony's cheek, all the tenderness and fear that raged in his chest displayed in the light caress of his fingers. "How could I endanger you like that?" 

Tony slapped his hand away, his eyes chips of amber in his handsome face. It was not an expression that sat well on his features. More aching pain and loneliness. The Winter Soldier thought that perhaps Tony had never felt quite so betrayed, his mouth wasn’t made for it. 

"That makes no sense, Buckaroo, so don't try to talk your way out of it now. If they'd know I was working with the serum -- and Peggy helping me -- why’ve we heard nothing about it? I’m either already in danger, or I’m not. And you did it, it’s your fault, regardless. Don't try to paint yourself over noble now. That doesn’t fly." 

The Winter Soldier blinked. There was a strange, unknown pain in his chest -- he, for whom no organs would ever cease function if he wasn't directly injured, that no disease could take hold upon. He ached, in his chest, his jaw, the back of his throat. 

"You're right," the Winter Soldier managed to croak out those two words. 

"And _furthermore_... wait, what?" 

"You are correct." The Winter Soldier blanched. "They should know, they should have known. I've been back to New Atlanta since I was here last." A singular lightness from within, melting the ice that had formed around his heart. "Tony, show me this lab, show me now!" 

Tony hitched in a breath as if to argue, but there was a passion, a burning, in the Winter Soldier's words, and Tony threw up his hands in disgust. “You suck, you know that? Like so, so much.” 

*** 

"Get started on this." The Winter Soldier tossed him the container, and it was only out of reflex that Tony caught it at all. "I want to look around." 

Tony rolled his eyes expressively, but the Winter Soldier had already turned away, his quick hands searching the machinery. Well, Tony thought, he was right about one thing: even without his memories, Bucky hadn't changed much. The Winter Soldier had always, always been one to take command, to understand the nature of delegation, and to be able to focus with aggravating single-mindedness on his tasks. It hadn't always been frustrating. And he made love like he did everything else: thoroughly and with great diligence. Not that it mattered, Tony told himself firmly. 

Tony slapped the bug into the spectroscope, plascrete containment box and all. There was no point trying to sedate the insect. If he was lucky, and quick, he'd be able to pierce a few cells, extract the nanobots that made up the serum and get a reading on its programming, before he had to kill it. Cockroaches, even when uninfected, sometimes bit humans and transmitting the Lazarus virus inside the city would be bad. Very bad. They hadn’t yet tested Tony’s dummy rounds; if there was a cure for someone infected by the virus, they weren’t sure they had it, yet. 

Tony removed an incinerator from the cabinet. _Let's see it rebuild itself that quickly_. 

"You always give me the nicest presents," Tony said sarcastically. He didn't really intend the Winter Soldier to hear that, and if he’d been trying to reach the man underneath, Bucky said nothing, still occupied with looking on, under, and in the various computer machinery. Tony wasn’t going to ask what he was looking for, resentful that a thing, some thing, was obviously stealing what little of the Winter Soldier’s attention that Tony had to start with. 

"There. I have it!" Tony tagged the insect, removed one single scrape of a cell from it, enough to grab a sample and transport it to the slide for analysis. 

"Surely I could not have been so stupid," the Winter Soldier muttered. 

"Of course not," Tony agreed. "You'd never act without thinking, you'd never encourage treason, you'd never fall in love, and certainly you'd never destroy it so completely and utterly." Tony set fire to the cockroach, which exploded messily on the inside of the plascrete container. _Yuck_. 

Tony didn't have as much of a fortune as the Starks had once had, before the war. Before every bit of what he’d owned had to go to providing for the city-state, to keeping people _safe_. But if Tony had still had those billions (even if he did, paper money was beyond worthless in this post-apocalyptic society) he'd have given it all away in order to take back his last sentence. 

The Winter Soldier -- it was hard to see him as just the Winter Soldier, that look was goddamn Bucky Barnes, or Tony would eat his damn arc-reactor -- gave him such a stricken look, full of anguish, that Tony suddenly doubted everything that the Winter Soldier had said forsworn. Surely he could not have forgotten _everything_ , if Tony's bitter sarcasm could hurt him so badly. 

Tony crossed the room. He was hurting but it didn’t mean he had no empathy left. It went against everything in him to stand by idly while someone else was in pain. He touched Bucky's cheek. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." 

His words vanished into a breathy groan as Bucky hauled him into a fierce passionate embrace, Tony's heedless mouth was captured in one of those fiery kisses. "I still feel, Tony," Bucky said, kissing a blazing trail down Tony's throat, taking tiny tastes of his lips, the firm underside of his chin. He found the buttons on Tony's shirt, unfastened one and tore the remaining free in his haste. They struck the floor with audible plinks, rolling under the counters. Bucky's mouth fastened on Tony's bare shoulder, kissing, biting, licking. Tony wrapped his arms tight around his lover, held him, felt the heartbeat under his fingertips racing. "I still want." Bucky's lips traveled the length of Tony's collarbone, bit delicately at the sensitive flesh of his throat, then tangled his tongue around the silver chain Tony never took off. 

Tony wanted to stop him; letting him touch and be touched was as sure a route to heartbreak as anything Tony had ever done, and this time he was doing it on purpose. Knowing that he was offering his heart on a plate for the Winter Soldier to toss it aside again, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. If this was all he was ever going to have, he was going to damn well take it. Take it and hold on as hard as he could. 

"What is this thing?" Bucky pulled back slightly, flicking his tongue over his teeth with the wrinkled nose of someone who has tasted something unpleasant. 

Tony groaned. He wasn't certain if he was frustrated from the sudden rush of desire, or from Bucky's infernal lost memory. "You gave it to me, idiot." 

"I did?" Bucky tugged on the chain until he held the amulet at the end in his hand. 

Tony unlocked the chain, dropped the amulet onto that metal palm, and closed Bucky’s fingers over it. "More exactly, Aunt Peggy gave it to me, as a gift from you. She escorted you out to the borderlands, and brought it back for me. I haven't taken it off since. But you should have it back. It no longer means what--" 

Bucky worked the catch open with trembling fingers and his jaw dropped. Tony didn’t know what it was, a loop of fine silver, capped with a red star. Jewelry of some sort. He’d always assumed it meant something to Bucky, and treasured it for that reason alone. "I am brilliant. Oh _Merciful_ , I am brilliant." 

"Don't strain yourself being modest." 

Tony's sarcasm was swallowed whole as Bucky kissed him again, the sort of kiss that men killed for. Every lick and flicker of tongue was passion-filled and burning, eager and just the tiniest bit restrained. Bucky's fingers tangled in Tony's hair, pulled tight till they were crushed together. Each nerve ending felt aflame with desperate wanting. Tony felt his heart throb, skip and eventually thrum in time with his lover's. 

"God damnit, stop, Bucky." Tony shoved him away, breathing hard. "Stop it." 

"Why?" 

"I don't need you to wreck my life any more than you've already devastated it. Please, just stop. It doesn't mean as much to you as it does to me." 

Bucky laughed aloud, brandishing the necklace at Tony like a weapon. "Ah, but it will! It will."

"What are you on about now?" 

"Memories, dollface. These are my memories. I did plan ahead. I _did_." Bucky plucked the silver strand from the locket with gentle reverence. " _Everything_ , it'll be right here. You held them around your heart the whole time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been having a helluva week here. Our HVAC system died a slow and painful death to the tune of "wow, we can only just barely afford this and NOTHING better go wrong for the next 2 years" and we're on the hook for the whole expense, because our home warranty company screwed us.
> 
> I was out of town for 2 days last week (I had a reading/signing for one of my published books, and thanks to everyone who came out even if I did INJURE MY THUMB signing my name like 300 times and also bought me enough tequila to get falling over drunk, thank you!) so that was great, but then I had a conversation with my father that infuriated me so much I spent most of last week seething about it!
> 
> On the plus side, my co-conspirator dragged me into another Whole Novel of WinterIron goodness (this time science fiction/space pirates) She claims I dragged her and ultimately the blame goes to the WinterIron Discord sprinters and angst muffins.


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky pushed his hair back, the tangled brown locks parting to reveal silver tendrils. "Retaining strands. That's how we do what we do." The cords of data, braided together and inserted just behind the ear, was storage for all his short-term memories. They would be removed and later analyzed in New Atlanta by the Shield’s massive computer system, Ultron, and the memories collected into a series of dry, emotionless facts to be accessed by the all agents as needed.

He'd never actually connected to an unadulterated strand before. He was not prepared. A watershed of memory rushed over him, a cacophony of sound, a mirage of images, feelings, thoughts. He tumbled, going over the waterfall, crushed by the weight of those lost years, months, moments. 

_... "you give it to him for me, tell him, in a few years, maybe, the truth."_  

_"You should have told him yourself." Peggy frowned at him, the spiderweb of wrinkles around her eyes, the only signs of her advanced age, crinkling in disapproval._  

_"I know. I just... is it so selfish that I didn't want to see it? I love him, you know I love him," he pleaded with her, fingers twining around the retaining strand. He hadn’t tugged it free yet. As soon as he did, everything would go away. All of his love and passion, but also all of his pain._  

_His throat was tight with unshed tears; had he ever known this much agony, soul-burning and heavy? Was he looking forward to the wipe for the first time? It certainly felt so; he would do anything to end this agony. Had there been others, before? His whole life, was it alone, or were there countless lovers he'd left behind and forgotten utterly? There was no way to tell. "Hard enough leavin’ him behind. Should I taint that even further now? He'll understand. I hope he will."_  

_Peggy shook her head. "The worst thing about these wipes, what Shield does to us," she said, "is that we don't learn from our experiences. We keep the only dry, emotionless events -- and only those the handlers deem worthy. And in your heart, you're still as green and stupid as any other boy."_  

_He almost stopped her from taking the strand, from pulling it free of his mind, but--_  

In the lab, beset by emotion, overwhelmed by memories, the Winter Soldier fell to his knees, hands clenched deep in his hair. 

_... bodies tangled with desire, the sticky heat of sweat providing delicious friction as their bodies rubbed together. Bucky strained, he couldn't pull Tony close enough, couldn't get enough of the skin on skin contact, his mouth never leaving the salty flesh of his lover, tasting, breathing in his nearness, living and existing for this moment alone._  

_"Wish you didn't have to go," Tony said, drawing a teasing line down Bucky’s chest, finger tracing along the waistband of his trousers. Bucky forced a half-smile, heart aching._  

_"I wish you wouldn't talk about it," Bucky answered. He snatched at the teasing hand, jerked Tony's arm down, placed Tony's palm firmly against Bucky’s straining erection, ground his hips against his lover's fingers. He groaned at the touch, then roughly pushed Tony onto his back. Bucky tore the buttons free in his eagerness to get Tony’s pants off, much too eager, he was going to come rubbing against that smooth skin if he didn't get what he wanted, what he_ needed _. There was nothing but hot desire in Tony's eyes and Bucky let himself sink into those eyes, sink in and drown there, not looking away._  

_He'd tasted Tony's lips a hundred times and more, but tonight, this one night, was sweeter and more bitter than any flavor he could ever imagine. The last time, the very last. And even having memorized every line of his face, every soft nuzzle of his mouth, Bucky was startled all over again at how intoxicating those sweet kisses were. How full and lush Tony’s mouth was, how heavy his breath, and how Bucky’s entire body turned to fire with the simple touch. Like accelerant on coals, he burned._  

Someone was screaming, agonizing sounds, like entrails being ripped free and devoured by hungry lazars. The Winter Soldier's throat ached, it was on fire, he couldn't breathe. He was going to die, right here, suffocated by the force of his own feelings. 

_The boy smiled at him, and it wasn't until that second look that the Winter Soldier realized that he wasn't really a boy at all, just slender and somewhat shy, with sparkling eyes and the sort of infectious grin that ought to be a sin against humanity. And those who were more than human. The Winter Soldier's breath caught in his throat and his heart throbbed in time to distant music that he felt rather than heard._  

_"Hey, nice to meet you finally. My aunt’s told me all about you," the man said. "I'm Tony Stark."_  

_“I’m James Barnes. But you can call me Bucky.” The Winter Soldier didn’t know what possessed him to give the man his nickname, a foolish and silly thing that some of his friends back before rebirth had called him. No one had called him that in… The Winter Soldier couldn’t remember. Didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure why the little blurb of information had been left lingering in his retaining strands for him to call up._  

_But Tony smiled, brilliant and wide and inviting. For Tony, the Winter Soldier would be_ Bucky _._  

"Oh, Merciful," Bucky gasped. His eyes blurred and tears rolled down his cheeks, dripping onto the cool tile of the floor that was mere inches away from his nose. "You live like this, all the time? How can you bear it?" 

Tony dropped to his knees, a marionette cut free from strings of panic and frozen terror, drawing Bucky into his embrace. Bucky cried out, pulled himself in tight, brushed his hot, tear-stained cheek against Tony's waist. 

"It's not easy," Tony said with pained honesty. "Remembering can be pretty awful, at times." He feathered his hand through Bucky's hair. "But mostly, those moments, those perfect memories of joy and love. They're a light in the darkness. What is life without them?" 

Bucky raised his head, his eyes tortured. "Empty. And the hard truth of it is, I'm only now realizin’ it." 

*** 

Bucky bit down on a protest when Tony shoved him toward the incessantly pinging computer. "Just let it settle, honey," Tony said. "We can sort your memories out soon enough, provided we don't die in this lazar horde of yours." 

"It's not my horde," Bucky protested, his mouth tugging up into a reluctant smile. "I didn't make them." 

"Well, then you won't mind unmaking them. Let's get to work. You can get your brain straight later." 

"Unlikely. I have plans for _later_." 

Tony grinned, shooting Bucky a look of pure passion that seemed to turn all of his bones to water. He fell, rather than sat, in the chair next to the computer. 

Bucky turned his attention to the macro-programming they'd managed to snag from the infected roach. Trillions of line of code, and nearly sixty percent of it was going to be the jumbles, with no form or function; the Lazarus virus was so ancient by this point that no one could make heads or tails of the original code. 

The Lazarus virus had been a mistake. Originally, it was only meant to take out the enemy super-soldiers; worst case scenario, it would have returned them to a normal, baseline functional human. 

At first, it seemed that was what happened. The super-soldiers fell over on the battlefield as soon as they were infected; the virus serum spread like a crop-duster over the field. "Yeah, brilliant plan, just brilliant." 

There were, or had been, shutdown commands, redirecting or disabling certain functions of the soldiers. Bucky tried, firmly, to prevent himself from dwelling on the fact that these commands often did no more than slow the lazars so that a Soldier-Agent could take them out. Fifty or a hundred at a time were easily destroyed. But what was one lone Soldier-Agent going to do against perhaps as many as a hundred thousand? 

Bucky opened up his own serum to its full capacity, searching for weaknesses in the Lazarus code. Each nanite -- and there were millions in his blood stream, millions of tiny, fully functional processors -- grabbed a chunk of the virus's corrupted code, examined it for key phrases and programming, stored the suggested alterations to yet another retaining strand. The best thing to do, Bucky knew, was to just not think: to let the massive databases do their work. It was… entirely the opposite of his training, which usually processed petabytes of information for combat and provided him tactical data that was even sharper than instinct. 

"This code is a mess," Bucky complained. "It's a wonder that the lazars function at all. There's not even any--" Bucky stopped talking, nearly fell off his stool in shock. "That's not possible." 

"Want to try for more obscurity? I'm certain you'd be able to manage it if you put in just the tiniest amount of effort." 

Bucky peered through the scope. "Does Resilient still have a Shield-provided arsenal?" 

"Probably?" Tony crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I don't know that anyone's been inside there in years. Why? Even if we arm everyone in town, we're not likely to kill all the lazars before they infect people." 

"There's no Faraday shielding around these serum." 

"Huh?" 

"They're vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse. I'm not; the iron in my blood is used to coat the serum, to protect the nanites." Bucky leaped up from his stool, nearly knocking the platters with the samples onto the floor. "Where's the armory? Merciful be good, there will be pulse guns inside."


	7. Chapter 7

There were pulse-rifles: seven, in fact, that still functioned. In centuries gone by, the armory had provided small city-state militias with defenses against other invading city-states. Populations, especially in the south and east, sometimes still warred over limited resources, but the excessive numbers of lazars and deviants in the wastelands between city-states had cut down on that, until very little remained of the need for warcraft or armories. The city-states were ruled by small councils, or dictators, or elected boards; each of those was answerable only to themselves or their peoples, controlling everything within their borders. The city-states occasionally listened -- some more than others -- to advice and certain laws that came out of New Atlanta, the Dictates of the Handlers, enforced by the Soldier-Agents of Shield.

Tony slung one of the remaining pulse-rifles over his back.

"You don't have the look of a warrior, armed or not," Bucky said, his eyebrows beetling together fiercely. He'd argued against Tony accompanying him on the extermination.

"Well, you don't look much like a one-man army, either, but we'll just have to do the best we can."

Bucky leaned in and snagged a quick kiss, a brush of lips and tongue that set fire to Tony's mouth and left him aching and panting for more. "I can always count upon you to keep my pride in check," Bucky said, shoving the remaining rifles into a large battle-wagon.

"I just want everything to be able to fit in such a small space. You, me, the weapons, your ego. You understand." Tony made a gesture toward the armory, which in no way could actually be described as _small_. A large warehouse full of bladed weapons, guns, biologic specimens long since dead and useless, toxins, armored vehicles, and other creations of an era long-since gone, there was enough room within for several hundred people, with enough room left over for dozens of egos.

Bucky sighed and went back to checking the gear; evidently Tony's insult was not worthy of a retort.

"What are you going to do?" Tony asked, running his hand down one side of the battle-wagon.

"I'm going to check the core-cells on this, and see if I can get it running," Bucky said, sliding up under the vehicle.

"I mean, after we kill all the lazars." Tony aimed a playful kick at his lover, catching him in the shoulder. "Just rip more of your hair out, and I'm supposed to wait for you to be randomly assigned back here?" There was an edge to his voice. He didn't really want it there, but there didn't seem to be much in the way of options. Bucky would leave, he would forget, and he might never be back again. Ruining Tony’s life a second time. He couldn’t bear the idea.

Bucky stuck his head out from under the battle wagon. "It will be a great tragedy, and the worst part is, there will be none to report it."

"I don't understand."

"I don't think the Winter Soldier will survive the battle of Resilience. The citizens will have to notify New Atlanta when -- indeed, if -- the communications rebuild is a success."

"You think that'll work? Faking your death?" Tony brightened, impossible hope brimming over in his dark eyes.

"Darling, I'm not sure it'll need to be faked." Bucky slid out from under the battle wagon, turning his face aside as if not to watch that flicker of hope die.

***

It would have been nice, Tony reflected, if their enemy had lined up. Well, maybe not nice, but at least dramatic. Or romantic. There was nothing quite so hopelessly romantic as a last stand. Which was, in all honesty, about what he expected this to be. The last stand of the Winter Soldier and Tony Stark, the last stand for Resilience, perhaps even the last stand for humanity. There should have been a moment to appreciate the enormity of the doom about to descend.

But it wasn't that easy. Tony drove the battle wagon and Bucky stayed in the turret. The pulse-rifles were lined up like soldiers against the rack. Bucky would use one until the ion-battery needed recharging, then he would switch. That was the plan, as far as they had one. It wasn't a great plan, but as Bucky had said, "No battle plan ever survives the first meeting with the enemy." For the first dozen miles, there was nothing.

And then... there was. A few lazars appeared, loping down the abandoned highway. They weren't moving quickly, although they were certainly capable of moving nearly at the speed of a vehicle.

 _Food must be in short supply,_ Tony thought, revolted.

The lazars ran on all fours, like apes, knuckles dragging along the ground to give them more support.

"Oh, fragments!" Tony exclaimed, choking suddenly on the mouthful of stench that preceded the lazars, a foul putrid cloud. "They stink."

Bucky yelled something, but the words were ripped away by the wind and rumble of the war-wagon. Tony slowed, checked the map. There was a turn off no more than two miles away. They'd take care of these dozen, no two dozen, no... oh parts and processors, there were a damned lot of them, all of a sudden swarming out of the bushes and the ruins of the landscape.

Seemingly with one mind, several of them leapt toward the war-wagon, mouths open in broken-tooth snarls, gaping wide and dripping toxic saliva. One scrambled for a hold on the narrow strip of portal, giving Tony his first look at a live lazar. Unfortunately, it was rapidly followed by his second view, and his third, and tenth. They didn't get any more attractive, or less wrong-seeming with repeated exposure.

Each one looked almost human. Almost. In ways that twisted the brain into uncomfortable places. Eyes that were too large, or too narrow, or just hells breath in the wrong entire locations. Mouths that gaped and stretched, filled with more teeth than were strictly necessary. Tongues with eyeballs on the tip. Clawed hands that could rip up steel and tie it in knots. Bulging muscles, straining at split and mangled flesh. And in every mangled, tortured face, Tony could see hunger, desperate hunger. He swallowed hard, hands tightening on the wheel.

 _How is Bucky not insane, dealing with these creatures?_ Tony thought, jerking the war-wagon sharply to the left to loosen the lazar's grasp on it. The pulse-rifle fired, a staccato thump, the strike of a muffled drum. Whump whump whump. The lazars fell like poisoned roaches, not even twitching in the aftermath.

Still more poured out of the landscape, an evil tide roiling forth, crashing down on their insignificant defense. Bucky fired calmly, lining his shots up to catch as many of the lazars in a single burst as possible. Hundreds dropped, their already-decaying bodies littering the roadside.

One of the pulse-rifles fell into the body of the war-wagon, its charge spent. Tony reached backward and locked the butt into place against the portable charger inside the wagon. So long as the vehicle kept moving, they'd regain charge quickly, maybe ten minutes to full charge. Tony tried to ignore the math that said for each ten minutes of charge time, there were six minutes of use. How soon would they bleed the guns dry?

"We are both going to die out here," Tony muttered.

"At least we're together," Bucky yelled, having caught the sound of Tony's voice even over the roar of battle. "Turn south!"

Tony nodded, knowing Bucky couldn't see him, jerking the wheel to the left. A few more lazars were ripped free from the vehicle. One was crushed under the wheels of the war-wagon, although that would not stop the creature for long. Whump whump whump. Tony dropped the throttle full open, rammed a double-dozen of the lazars.

 _Together_ , he thought. _For as long as we both shall live._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do want to say that, in the original work, this was where it ended...
> 
> My arguments with my editor at the time were "it meets the technical requirements of Happy for the Rest of their Lives, all five minutes of it..."
> 
> I swear, I got actual hate mail for this particular piece...
> 
> That being said, let me pull a Princess Bride here. "They do not get eaten by the eels at this point."


	8. Chapter 8

“They’re gonna die out there,” the Captain commented. Steve was studying the layout of the battle, the lazars outlined in sickly green light and the tiny war-wagon was a dot of brilliant blue, surrounded by the dark browns of hills and rocks.

“So?”

“Stop it,” Hawkeye said, nudging his woman in the ribs with one pointy elbow.

“He left you to die,” Nat pointed out. She was studying the battle through her spyglass, eyes indifferent to the scene.

“And here I am, still fit as a fiddle,” Clint said. “It’s fine, Nat. I’m fine.”

“That’s not his fault and you know it. He didn’t have any control over his actions. It wasn’t him,” Steve pointed out. Of course he did. Steve had been the Winter Soldier’s prime defender since the Avengers had dragged Clint and Nat out of the middle of that terrible battle at Ascendant. They’d been saved at a terrible cost. Nat’s dreams were still haunted by the screams her lover had made while healing from wounds that should have killed even an Agent-Soldier.

“He still did it.”

“He’s not the only one with red in his ledger,” Steve reminded her. “We’ve all done things we regret. Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well. But we did it because we thought we were right, we thought Shield was the best way.”

“We were wrong about that, too,” Nat said. “I thought when I joined Shield that I was doing something good for the world. But we just traded lazars for Shield. And I guess I can’t tell the difference anymore.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Clint said, pointing, “we still have the lazars, so let’s kill one enemy before we start plannin’ a civil war?”

“We should just leave him,” Nat said again, but she said it quietly. She knew they were right, and that letting the Winter Soldier die wouldn’t serve any purpose at all. Might even cost them a decent mechanic. And the people of Resilience hadn’t done anything to earn her wrath.

She dropped her spy glass back into her belt pouch and climbed aboard the Quinjet. She strapped into one of the chairs in the bay. When they got over the combat zone, she had a armored motorcycle ready to go; Sam would fly them in close and drop Clint, Steve, and her into the melee, then back them up on aerial support.

Nat grabbed onto her strap and held on.

“Let’s go, Sam,” Steve said. He didn’t bother to strap in; just grabbed his shield and waited. As soon as Sam dropped the hatch, he was away, rolling into the combat.

“He didn’t have a chute on, did he?”

“Nope.”

***

“How’re we doin’ back there?” Bucky yelled, leaning into the war-wagon.

 _We’re fucked_. “I’ll have a fresh rifle for you in three minutes,” Tony told him, eyeing the rack of rifles.

“Honey, I don’t think we’ve got three minutes,” Bucky said.

“Well, then we’ve got my stunning good looks and your fingernails,” Tony said.

“Yeah, that’ll hold ‘em for a while,” Bucky said. He ducked into the wagon and pulled the hatch down behind him. “Drive, drive, drive. See if you can’t find a hole, or somethin’. They’ll tear this thing t’ pieces in no time.”

Tony might have killed a few, rolling over them with the wagon, although it was doubtful. Blunt trauma injuries were among the easiest to heal, unless the spinal cord got torn. Tony peered through the scope again, running numbers in his head, predicting the path of the lazars -- a thing which he had been told before was wildly unpredictable, but they did seem pretty consistent, at least. If it moved, they chased it. Tony yanked the wheel to the left, pushed down on the throttle. Plowed through a mess of lazars that were clustered near an uneven section of road; even the strongest creature in the world was subject to gravity, and the fall on the side would take them a few seconds to recover.

Except Tony didn’t account for the crumbling ground.

He ran down the first dozen, or two, or more, and then the street crumbled under them.

“Hold on!” he yelled. He was strapped in, but Bucky wasn’t, and the soldier-agent went careening inside the small drive-space. Blood splattered, and Bucky screamed and the war-wagon rolled over, and over again until it came to rest upside down in the gully, treads still churning along uselessly.

They were turtled, and like a bird of prey, the lazars were going to rip open their weaker belly to get to the tasty bits of meat inside.

“Bucky?”

Also, without the war-wagon running, power from the battery would run dry and the guns couldn’t charge.

Tony snagged the one in the charger the second the light went green.

Bucky groaned, dragged himself across the ceiling. Literally dragged. His legs didn’t seem to be working and his hips were at an unnatural angle.

“You okay?”

Of course he wasn’t okay, there was nothing okay about this situation. But Tony didn’t know what else to do.

There was a thump as something landed on the underside of the wagon. Several more. Tony pressed the release on his seatbelt and angled himself away from Bucky, to fall to the floor. His palm sizzled in agony for a moment when he came in contact with an exposed bit of engine core, then his nanites healed it over. Tony hadn’t had a lot of experience with pain and fighting, but he could see how the healing factor was a blessing, during melee.

“I need you t’ lift me up, jus’ a bit, until I can grab the steering wheel,” Bucky told him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Broke my leg, again. Just need to get it straightened out before it heals crooked,” Bucky said. Bucky was not light, but the scrabbling sounds of lazar claws against the metal unbelly gave Tony panic strength.

Fortunately, Bucky’s serum was strong, he was limping but functional before the first lazar’s claws were inside the passenger compartment.

Bucky threw himself down, slithered on the roof over to one of the hatches and yanked it open. He stuffed the rifle out, fired it upward, without being able to see. Tony hoped he’d hit something, at least, and for a moment, the noise of claws and bodies in top was stilled.

“Tony,” Bucky said, getting himself upright. He was staring at the few holes that had been torn in the war wagon, the glimpse of blue sky above. “Baby?”

Bucky’s voice was breaking, like he was getting ready to cry. That was impossible, Bucky wasn’t scared, he was never scared, soldier-agents weren’t afraid. Because if Bucky was afraid, then Tony had no reason at all left to be brave.

“Yeah?”

Tony turned, looked at his lover. Bucky was standing there, face a mess, armor torn in places, the pulserifle leaning against his hip. In his right hand, he held a holdout pistol, a tiny little weapon that Tony didn’t even realize he’d been carrying. Nothing that would stop a lazar.

“Tony, come here, baby, I don’t want this to hurt you, not for a second,” Bucky said. Bucky was shaking, his chin trembling, his eyes fluttering with unshed tears, but the hand holding the gun was rock steady.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I’m gonna save you,” Bucky said. “You… you don’t wanna go like this. Your nanites will keep you alive for too long, you don’t… baby, please, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Come here, an’ let me do this for you. Wait for me, I’ll come right after. I love you.”

Bucky placed the muzzle of the little gun directly at the base of Tony’s skull. It would tear through his backbone, sever his spinal cord, and continue down into his heart. Bucky wrapped his other arm around Tony’s waist, spooning them together.

“I know,” Tony said. “Do it.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, 27dragons, who was my original editor for this piece when it was published, had said, when she accepted it, "I have the headcanon that they're rescued at the last minute and you cannot change my mind."
> 
> I mighta taken that as a challenge.  
> When I wrote this chapter, I immediately messaged her and said "I MADE IT WORSE."


	9. Chapter 9

There were three shots in the hold out pistol. One for Tony, one for himself, and an extra.

So when the floor panel came off and was thrown aside by a terrific force, Bucky didn’t hesitate. He took the gun off Tony’s neck and fired at the dark shape that loomed over them.

“Bucky, what the hell?”

A few short days ago, Bucky might have responded to that with, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

“ _Captain_?”

“Since when am I captain to you, jerk?” Steve Rogers stuck his head back over the hole, peering in. “You gonna shoot me again?” He waved one blood-covered hand at him, dripping from a graze across his temple.

Behind him came the incredible sound of rolling machine turret fire, the whine of a Quinjet’s VTOL engines. The screams of dead and dying lazars.

Tony was gasping for air, hand pressed over his chest like he was having a damn heart attack and Bucky didn’t blame him in the slightest. Bucky had come within a claw’s mark of shooting them both. For the record, Bucky decided, if he’d shot Tony, even to find himself looking up into Steve’s cheerfully sunny face, he would have killed himself anyway. No second guesses on that.

“Good reflexes,” Bucky said, breathing slowly. “Sorry.”

“C’mon out of there, we got ‘em on the ropes, pal.” Steve offered him a hand up and Bucky nudged Tony.

“Take Tony first,” Bucky said. “He’s a top rated mechanic and engineer. You might need him.”

“We need both of you,” Steve said, easily enough. He grabbed Tony’s hand and yanked, and a moment later Bucky found himself standing on the turned-turtle war wagon, staring around at a hundred dead lazars, most of them with their heads sheered off, or the telltale marks of--

“You still fighting with that damn frisbee, Rogers?”

“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” Steve said.

“Uh, I take it these are friends of yours?” Tony said, eyeing Steve warily. “Shield?”

“Not anymore,” Steve said. “We’re independents, now. Call ourselves the Avengers. Little bit of a story, there, and while we’re almost done with the mop up for this operation, might be a little safer to have this conversation elsewhere.”

“Pretty sure that it this --” and Tony gestured around to the devastated battlefield and the flipped war wagon and the Quinjet “--is not going to be a secret much longer. If it’s supposed to be one.”

Steve poked at the wound on his face again, splattering blood everywhere. “Sorry, Tony,” he said. “I hope you didn’t have much of a life in Resilience, because you just died. Can’t risk it, not yet. You’re coming with us. We’ll leave one of the heavy guns here, a discard. Eventually someone will come out to see what happened. They’ll assume that you two were killed in action, and that what’s left of the horde has moved on. No one’s seen the Quinjet. We had to wait until you were out of sight of the city before we attacked, sorry for the scare. This job... We try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that doesn't mean everybody. But if we can't find a way to live with that... next time... maybe nobody gets saved.”

“Yeah, well, I prefer solutions with minimal collateral damage, but you do you, buddy,” Tony said.

“Tony,” Bucky said, softly. “This is what we were looking for.”

“Huh?”

“A way… a way to be together. Steve’s been off Shield’s roster for, what, about seventy years now? I thought he was _dead_. Everyone did. No more Atlanta. This is… this is the option we’ve been looking for.”

Tony looked Steve up and down as if he was decidedly unimpressed. “Well, might as well have a look.”

***

Tony might have been impressed with the Helicarrier.

He certainly wasn’t going to admit it. The place was the epitome of modern, a huge VTOL craft that could stay aloft with an array of high tech microscreens on the bottom that projected an image of the sky above.

“We’re just about invisible from the ground,” Steve said.

“What’s the fuel source?” Tony asked, looking around. The thing was huge, the kind of power needed to run a mobile, airborn headquarters was immense.

“ITER reactor,” Steve said. “It runs on seawater, so we refuel and restock out in the Pacific, about once a month or so.”

“So, you’re vulnerable once a month?” Bucky asked. Trust Tony’s soldier-agent to turn over the bright, shiny penny looking for tarnish.

“Yes and no,” Steve said. “Shield doesn’t maintain much in the way of an ocean-going fleet. After the Pacific Islands were wiped out in the last war, it was too much effort to maintain a sea-based military. We’ve been able to re-populate those islands with survivors and non-combatants. They’re the first lazar-free homes people have had in decades.”

“There’s something you’re not telling us,” Tony said, turning the whole thing over in his head. “If you’ve got this kind of tech, and it’s as efficient at killing lazars as it appears to be, why are we all still living in shielded city-states? Can’t we just wipe out the plague and go back to being the top of the food chain?”

“Well, that’d be nice,” one of the new guys -- Hawkeye, Tony thought his name was -- said. “‘Cept we got bigger and badder problems.”

“Like?” Fragments, it was like pulling teeth for anyone to tell him what was going on, and Tony got that, he did. Something was going on, though, and his whole life had been disrupted because of it. The least he deserved out of all this, was the truth.

Although the way that redhaired soldier-agent was looking at him, hate in her vivid blue eyes, Tony was thinking maybe she believed his life was as much, and maybe even more, than he deserved.

“Fury’ll tell you,” Steve said. He put one hand on Tony’s shoulder and directed him, with less than polite nudges, onto the C&C of the Helicarrier.

“Or he won’t,” Hawkeye added. “He’s big into secrets. He might just act like there’s nothing here to see.”

Fury, apparently, was the tall man with the black, flapping coat and a patch over one eye. He was bald as a rock,  and as unyielding as the same.

“You might have told me there were going to be civilians at risk,” Steve said, reporting in.

“I told Natasha,” Fury replied. “She’s comfortable with risk assessment.”

“Well, I hope you’re comfortable, because we didn’t have a choice,” Steve said. “We had to bring him with us.”

“Or shoot him on the field,” Natasha -- the redhead, apparently -- said.

Steve scowled. “I don’t do wetworks, we agreed on that, Fury. That’s not freedom, that’s fear. We’re fighting for our basic humanity, here, and slaughtering innocents based on what they might do. That doesn’t sit well with me, not even a little.”

“I take it we’re discussing my life and/or usefulness like I’m a cow?” Tony interjected himself into the conversation, because arguing with a bunch of blood-thirsty soldier-agents who all had guns was a great plan.

“You’re here now, Stark,” Fury said. “Pretty sure we can make some use of you. Or you can resettle with the rest of the--”

“I swear, if you say peasants, you’ll regret it,” Tony said.

“I was going to say survivors,” Fury said, mildly. “Winter Soldier.”

“Sir,” Bucky said. “Want to give me the sitrep?”

“It’s pretty simple, Soldier,” Fury said. He led the way over to a brilliantly illuminated tactical map, then pulled back.

“How do you see all this with one eye?” Tony wondered.

“He turns,” a dark haired woman said, mildly. “Give me your hand.” She took Bucky’s hand, pierced it with a needle and plugged the few drops of blood into her computer. “Welcome aboard, your biometrics are on file. I’ll get you two set up with rooms and--”

“Room.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tony stays with me. He’s my partner and my lover, and I’m not being separated from him again.”

Tony almost smiled at that, and gave the woman his hand without complaint, although he was pretty sure she jabbed him a little harder than strictly necessary with the needle, the wound closed over almost immediately.

“-- Hydra musta snuck something in, way back at the beginning of the war. We didn’t see, we were too busy fighting off the lazar plague, but they are in every inch of Shield’s infrastructure now. We don’t know who’s with us, who’s against us. Some people don’t even know they’re doing Hydra’s bidding, they’re just following orders.”

Fury pulled up the globe, dotting the light structure with sickly green. “Recently, there’ve been outbreaks of the lazars again, even in the most vigilant of city-states. We think Hydra’s getting ready to make a big move, one that will put an end to the city-states relative independence, put everyone under Hydra control.”

“What makes you think that?” Because Tony just couldn’t stop being nosy. He leaned against Bucky, let their fingers twine together.

“Because they found a cure,” Steve said.

“A cure for the lazar virus? What the utter fuck?” Tony was stunned. “Why… why are there more lazars now, then?”

“Because it’ll unite the city-states, especially if the ones who were becoming more and more outspoken against Shield’s restrictions, are returned to their human forms. A world, united under Hydra, and held in place by the threat of unleashing the hordes of lazars. Of becoming a lazar yourself, and then being returned to humanity. Knowing what you’ve done?”

“We killed hundreds of lazars,” Tony protested. “And they could have been saved?”

“Not yet,” Fury said. “We don’t have the cure. Hydra does. Dr. Zola’s got it. We’re gonna get it, that’s the plan. I’m putting a team together.”

“Yeah, count me out for that, I don’t want to join your little secret boy band,” Tony said.

Bucky didn’t respond to that, his eyebrows furrowing and his gaze speculative as he studied the tactical map. The gods only knew what he saw there, his enhanced nanites giving him a lot more information than Tony had access to.

“Dismissed, Winter Soldier. Rest up, get acclimated,” Fury said.

“Thank you, sir,” Bucky said, not quite tapping his heels together but it was obvious he wanted to.

“You’re gonna have to fill me in on this whole… thing,” Tony told him, following along. Tony wasn’t sure how Bucky knew where they were going, either, but trusted him. Down an elevator, through hallways, and then Bucky placed his right hand on the door and it slid into the frame, revealing a not particularly luxurious apartment. Cramped and painted a dull gray.

“Home sweet home,” Tony muttered, staring around. Tiny galley, two chairs and a table. Miniscule living space, a sofa that converted into a bed. Viewscreen. Boring.

Bucky shut the door behind them. “There’s an advantage,” he said.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“For the first time in weeks, we’re alone. With no urgent tasks.”

Tony turned around, got a look at Bucky’s face. “Oh. Well, hello soldier.”


	10. Chapter 10

“I love you,” Bucky said, because he had to. There was no other choice, that needed to be acknowledged before anything else. The words were branded on the air, and Tony smiled, eager and sweet, that eyebrow raised up like he wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“I know,” he said. Tony kissed him, kissed him like he had no choice in the matter either. As if Tony could not wait another second.

Bucky groaned against Tony’s mouth, needed to taste him, feel him, know him as well as he could. Tony was sweet, pliant, easy under Bucky’s lips. If he could have one memory, keep it for all time, it would just this, kissing Tony. And then, it occured to Bucky that he could. This one memory, he could have it. He could keep it. No one was ever going to take his thoughts and feelings from him, not ever, ever again.

Tony was in his arms, clinging like a limpet to his shoulders, and Bucky was kissing him, and that was never going to go away.

Bucky leaned back, breaking the kiss, memorizing the little whimper Tony made when their lips parted. “Lemme look at you,” he told Tony, breathless.

“If you want,” Tony said, his eyes a little glazed. “Rather you _touch me._ ”

Bucky slid his fingers into Tony’s hair, cradling his head and holding his mouth right where Bucky wanted it. Tony sighed, let his eyes flutter closed, and turned his mouth into the kiss, tongue slick and teasing, licking his way into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky’s body was hard, tense, against Tony’s, aching for every inch of skin.

“Everything,” Bucky murmured. “I want everything. Touch you, taste you, love you.”

The next kiss as as fierce and fiery as the first one had been gentle. More teeth than tongue, hot breaths. Tony was whining in the back of his throat and Bucky licked the sounds out of his mouth, swallowing them down. Bucky knew, he knew in his bones, how badly Tony wanted him, how badly he needed to have Tony.

“If you don’t take me to bed, soldier,” Tony growled, “I’m gonna take you here against the bedamned door.”

Bucky wasn’t entirely sure that was exactly a bad idea; his dick certainly seemed on board with that plan, twitching and sending bolts of heat up his length, and down into the arches of his feet. Tony wriggled against him, rubbing them together in new and delicious ways, and then Bucky was pushing him backward, onto the bed. He crawled onto the bed after Tony, settling in the cradle of his thighs, pressing himself down.

One more kiss turned into a dozen more; Bucky couldn’t resist that wanton mouth, the sweet sounds that Tony was making, the way the heat and curl of Tony’s tongue drove him mad with desire.

Tony wriggled under him, and that movement about killed Bucky, until he realized that Tony was struggling to get undressed, to get his skin against Bucky’s and then he was helping, finding the fasteners for Tony’s pants and lifting his knees so Tony could help Bucky shuck his pants.

They were naked together, finally, finally, and Bucky couldn’t help but draw back, wanting to see everything that Tony had for him, wanting to study it like poetry, appreciate it like art. Taste it like dessert. He put his mouth to work, licking and lipping at every inch of that bronze skin. “So gorgeous,” Bucky told Tony, stopping his work on one pale pink nipple, until Tony groaned, wrapped his fingers tight in Bucky’s hair and _shoved_.

Bucky breathed in, and then went where Tony wanted him. Surrounded by the sounds of Tony’s wanting, tasting his skin, smelling the tang of his sweat, his masculine scent, the way he writhed under Bucky’s hands and mouth. He swallowed Tony’s cock in a single, wet pull, taking him all the way in.

“Shards!” Tony yelled, practically bucking off the mattress.

Bucky grinned around his mouthful, the contractions doing wonderous things for the heavy feel of Tony in his mouth, and pinned Tony’s hips down, holding him still while Bucky unleashed wave after wave of sensation on him. Licking, twisting his jaw from side to side, swallowing him down, and then flicking his tongue around, light, barely there touches.

Tony was gasping, mewling, his chest working like a bellows, as Bucky tormented him with soft nuzzles and licks, with eager swallows and long, teasing strokes. Bucky managed to pull off long enough to gasp, “need th’ slick, honey,” before he went back to work. He was so focused on the job at hand -- to drive Tony absolutely out of his mind with need -- that he’d nearly forgotten the request by the time a squirming and struggling Tony managed to get hold of the little bottle from the bedside table and threw it at him.

Bucky returned to claim another kiss, like a bee to a flower, he just couldn’t resist Tony’s mouth. “Yeah, that’s good, baby,” Tony murmured as Bucky wet his fingers and slowly started working Tony open. A few long strokes, his wet fingertip over Tony’s opening, teasing it and pressing at the muscle.

Bucky slid one finger inside, a tight, slick fit. “Yeah?”

“Want this, want it so bad,” Tony was moaning, shifting under Bucky and spreading his thighs open to give Bucky more room, putting himself on shameless display. Bucky slipped another finger inside, tugged at Tony’s rim, kept kissing him every time the man gasped or moaned, swallowing all those animalistic, needy noises.

Tony sighed at the sensation. The brilliant, beautiful expressions that crossed his mobile face were nothing in comparison to the feel of him, stretching around Bucky’s fingers, the length of him rubbing against Bucky’s belly. Bucky worked his fingers in until the heel of his hand was pressed against Tony’s balls, then lifted and reached forward, seeking that little spot inside Tony’s body.

“I don’t want to wait,” Tony begged, fingernails digging into Bucky’s back. Tony’s urgency turned into Bucky’s drive, and he was pulling his fingers free.

Bucky slicked himself up, groaning at the feel of it, knowing that it was going to be better, so much better, when he was sheathed in Tony’s heat. Tony reached down, urgently pulling at Bucky’s hips, drawing him closer.

He lined them up, Tony not quite hindering more than helping, and then breached him.

One liquid inch at a time.

It was the hardest thing Bucky had ever done, not just slamming home into that heated welcome, but to give Tony the time to adjust to Bucky’s cock.

Tony didn’t have any such concerns, wrapping his legs around Bucky’s waist and practically yanking him down, and then…

Then there was nothing except Tony and Bucky and the moment when they became one.

Oh, gods.

Bucky thrust, moving slow and steady, forcing a rhythm, even when Tony seemed determined just to rut mindlessly, and eventually Tony calmed, responded, moved with him.

Bucky was counting; strokes, heartbeats, the steady spiraling whine of Tony’s voice as they moved together. Anything to keep his head in the moment, to let him make it good, make it so sweet, for Tony, for him.

There was lust, but more than lust, the swirling heat of need and desire, of love and longing. Love, a profound connection that bound them, more than just bodies, but hearts and minds and thoughts. It was just right. Intensely necessary.

Hearts pounded in time and Bucky moved, losing himself in the liquid slide, in the perfect clutch of Tony’s body. Moving inside Tony, feeling the way Tony’s muscles closed on him. Frantic, fumbling kisses at every opportunity. If he could crawl inside the man’s skin and live there forever, he would have, but the best he could do was this. This single, perfect moment.

Tony got a hand between them, sliding restlessly over his own cock as Bucky worked in him. A cry, a shout, and heat bloomed between them, slick and slippery. Another kiss.

And then everything in him was drawing up, tight, tighter, an impossible spasm, before everything let go at once and Bucky let Tony teach him how to live. How to love.

“This…” Bucky said, and Tony lifted his head. Slowly, Bucky’s racing heart went back to something resembling its normal pace. His lungs stopped aching for air, and all there was was the man in his arms. “This is where I belong.”

“Right here in my arms,” Tony agreed.

***

“What is it you want from me?” Tony demanded, getting right into Fury’s face. The rest of the Avengers were staring at him, as if no one ever questioned Fury before, and that was just annoying. The guy was secretive, furtive. The sort of man who put the dagger in cloak-and-dagger.

"What do we want from you?” Fury asked, as if this was completely obvious. “Uh-uh. What do you want from me? You have become a problem, a problem I have to deal with. We saved your life, Stark, we didn’t bring you up here to create a problem. And contrary to your belief, you are not the center of the universe. I have bigger problems in the southwest region to deal with."

Tony gritted his teeth. “So I’ve heard,” he said. “Your little press-gang here is quite persuasive. Seem to have convinced my man that he can’t tell you no. So I’m here to tell you that I am going to be dealing with these problems _with you_.”

Bucky made a face at that. “Honey,” he said, “this is my job, this is what I do. I know you want to help--”

“He’s not qualified,” Steve piped up. He turned his attention on Tony. “You’d just be in the way. You’re not a soldier. You’re not part of this team. We all work _together_.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I missed the part where you guys came right out of the womb knowing how to fight lazars. Best thing about you, soldier boy, came out of a bottle,” Tony snapped.

“You are so arrogant, Stark,” Natasha said. “You think because you’ve seen one battle--”

“I think it doesn’t matter,” Fury said. “We’ve got bigger problems than Stark and Stark’s ego. Now, we need the Avengers, all of you, to work together. If that means you work with Stark, then make it work. You’ve all done it before, figure it out.”

“And how do you suppose we do that?” That was Clint, piping up. Honestly, Tony was just about tired of these guys, but if facing them all down let him work with Bucky, let him stay at Bucky’s side, he’d do it.

He’d seen the lazar hordes. These guys… needed all the help they could get.

“Like the old man said. Together,” Tony said.

“Right,” Fury drawled. “Well, let’s do it.”

**Fin**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, originally there were going to be 11 chapters, but 11 ended up being so short I just tacked it on to 10 and called it good.
> 
> thanks for joining me for this experiment.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was once published as my own original fiction. In the years since it was published -- like six or seven years ago now -- the anthology went out of print, and the publisher went under. I have all rights back to that original material and I have since made a LOT of edits and added another four chapters in the process of turning it into fanfic, but I was surprised how well the characters meshed with the ones I wrote.
> 
> I wrote it to deal with some of my issues with the Jedi code, so there are some Star Wars elements in here too, hidden really deep among the zombies and memory wipes. This story had a much different ending (you're welcome!) and actually got me a few pieces of hate mail (How Dare You! seemed to be the general consensus.)


End file.
